Here's the latest roundup of stories about health IT companies, including Google, Cerner and Epic.
- Epic told its employees Aug. 12 that they will be permitted to work from home through at least the end of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift came after the Verona, Wis.-based EHR giant received criticism from hundreds of its employees, who were told by email earlier this month that they would be required to return for in-person work.
- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs outlined plans to resume its $16 billion Cerner EHR go-live in October after delays earlier this year.
- The Department of Veterans Affairs also awarded Cerner's government services business a potential $93.6 million delivery order to help deploy the third wave of its EHR rollout at more VA medical centers.
- Teladoc Health, which delivers direct-to-consumer virtual care, merged with digital consumer health company Livongo in an $18.5 billion transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter.
- Cerner and investment firm LRVHealth invested $6 million in digital health startup Xealth as part of a new collaboration.
- Allscripts, Cerner and Meditech posted their respective financial performances for the second quarter of 2020, all reporting revenue declines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Change Healthcare reported $694.2 million in revenue for the first quarter of the 2021 fiscal year, an 18.8 percent drop in year-over-year quarterly revenue amid the pandemic.
- Providence Services Group acquired a Meditech consulting firm that serves hospitals across the U.S., a move that serves Providence's ongoing strategy to launch an independent solutions and services provider for the healthcare industry.
- Google sister company Verily developed its own COVID-19 clinical testing lab that is focused on speeding up the testing process.
- Allscripts welcomed Carol Zierhoffer to its board of directors, serving as a member of the board's audit committee.
- Google Cloud AI partnered with the Harvard Global Health Institute to develop the COVID-19 Public Forecasts, a dashboard that provides 13-day projections for hospitalizations and death rates across all 50 states.
- Amazon's PillPack, the online pharmacy service it acquired in 2018, partnered with Prime Therapeutics and New Jersey health insurer Horizon Healthcare Services.
- Google announced it is updating its COVID-19 contact-tracing framework, developed in partnership with Apple, to accommodate user privacy concerns.
- Virginia on Aug. 5 became the first U.S. state to launch a COVID-19 tracking app built with Google and Apple's jointly developed exposure notification system.